The Bachelor Season 20: Show Analysis

The Bachelor Season 20 finale had approximately 9.3 million viewers. The drama on the show, specifically the women’s relations, perpetuate negative stereotypes of women and normalize the unnatural love affairs that are presented on the show. The drama presented on the show is nothing like normal relationships, which is part of the appeal of the show in the first place. “The underlying messages of the shows are beyond terrible. We’re essentially told that all women in their twenties should be desperately searching for a man to marry (most of the 30-something bachelorettes are portrayed as a particular breed of desperate), and that women are, in general, complete and utter nutjobs. Although, of course, this only applies to white women, as people of color
Obviously the whole setting of The Bachelor is unnatural. No one in real world falls in love like that, which is probably one of the reasons The Bachelor has such a low success rate when it comes to maintained long-term relationships. Another much more interesting reason some people watch the bachelor is because they are in a Fantasy League. Similar to a fantasy league for sports a group of friends get together form a “league” and all pay their dues so they can see who's lady will win. There are some where it is a simple bracket similar to “March Madness” then there are some leagues where it is a point system with different actions and outcomes until the season is all added up and whoever has the lady with the most points win. In these fantasy leagues they don't have any stats from last season like most fantasy leagues but only the superficial judgements from the contestants bios and headshots. For a complete set of rules and point system on the fantasy league see appendix